MARRIAGE
_Old scenes--How home looks after the city--My sister-in-law--In the
country a man grows old--The judge once more--I make Will a
suggestion--The joy of success--My wedding breakfast--Unexpected
talk--The hand of Jane_
Just before we were married, Sarah and I went down to my old home in
Jasonville. She was determined that I should make it up with my folks;
it hurt her gentle heart to think that I had lived all these years
without any news of my kin. It was a freezing January day when we drove
up to the red brick house next the store. As we rattled over the rutty
streets in the depot carriage, and passed the small frame houses all
closed in for the winter, I couldn't help feeling a most pharisaical
pleasure in knowing that I wasn't condemned to live in this bleak little
town.
When I knocked at the door, mother came to see who was there. She knew
me at once, but she looked at me slowly, in the questioning way I
remembered so well, before she said:--
"Well, Van! You've come back?"
"Yes, mother, and brought with me the best girl in the world."
"I am glad to see you both," she said quietly.
"And how's father?" I asked nervously.
"Your father died nearly three years ago. We didn't know where to send
word to you."
There was no reproach in her voice; it was as if she expected nothing of
me. We went into the house and sat down, and began to talk. It was
solemn and painful all around, and if it hadn't been for Sarah I should
have been taking an early train for Chicago. But she was sunny and
light-hearted, and seemed to take pleasure in being there. While we were
sitting in the front room talking to mother, a young woman came in with
two small children hiding in her skirts.
"Your brother Will's wife," mother explained quickly.
"Why, May!" I exclaimed, a little embarrassed, "I didn't exactly look
for this. Will didn't let me know--I--"
"We wanted to write you, but we didn't know where you were. I am very
glad to see you, Van," May said quietly, a little smile curving up from
her lips in a way that reminded me of the girl I once loved. She took
both Sarah's hands and looked straight into her eyes.
"And this is your wife, Van?"
"Not quite, yet."
Of course I had told Sarah all about May, and I thought she might be
cold to her, meeting her in this way of a sudden as Will's wife. She
always said May had been hard that time before--had been too keen about
her good principles to be a real woman. Yet, as they stood there looking
into each other's eyes, I could see that they would come together very
soon. Sarah smiled as if to say: "It's all right, my dear! You see, I
am glad you turned him away that time. We have no reason to quarrel,
have we?"
[Illustration: _I could see that they would come together very soon._]
May began to blush under that smile, as though she knew what was in
Sarah's mind. Then mother brought up May's two little boys, who went to
Sarah at once. Will was away somewhere and didn't come home until
supper. I thought he looked pretty old for his age. Perhaps business was
poor in Jasonville. The country ages a man fast when things go hard with
him. At first he was stiffish to me, taken aback by our unexpected
visit, but pretty soon he thawed to Sarah, who talked with him about his
boys.
After dinner Will and I went to the barn and had a long smoke. He told
me that the judge had pressed father pretty hard before he died, and
after his death there wasn't much saved but the store, and that was
mortgaged. And the business didn't amount to anything, according to
Will. The mail-order business had cut into the country trade pretty
badly by that time, and country people had begun more and more to go to
the city to buy their goods. Moreover, time had shown that Jasonville
lay to one side of the main lines of traffic. In short, Will had to
scrape the barrel to get a living out of the old store.
He asked how it had been with me, and it gave me considerable pride to
tell him what I had been doing. I told him about the packing business,
my sausage factory, the deal with Strauss. He opened his eyes as he
smoked my good cigar.
"So you struck it rich after all, Van!"
There was something on his mind, and after a time he managed to say:--
"I hope you won't have any more hard feeling for mother and me. We all
treated you pretty harsh that time; we never gave you credit for what
you had in you, Van."
"I guess it would have taken a prophet to see I had anything in me more
than foolishness," I laughed. "Anyhow, it was the best thing that ever
happened to me, Will, and I can't be too thankful that you folks in
Jasonville threw me out."
"Yes, Jasonville ain't just the place for an ambitious man," he sighed.
"And, Van,--about May,--it wasn't hardly fair. She cared most for you,
then, at any rate; she wouldn't marry me, not for five years."
"Don't say another word, Will. May will make the best sort of sister.
She's the right kind."
So that was the way we made it up as two brothers should. And the next
morning, after doing some thinking over night about how I could best
help my brother and May, I followed Will over to the store. On the way I
met the old judge, looking hardly a day older than when I saw him last.
He eyed me hard, as if he didn't know me from the last tramp, but I
stopped him and greeted him.
"So you're loose once more," he grinned. "I see they shut you up as soon
as you struck Chicago." He had a good time laughing at his little joke.
"Yes," I replied, "I am out once more, judge. And, from what I hear,
the Harringtons have been paying you pretty well for all the green
peaches I ever took off your place."
He mumbled something, but I turned on my heel, rather proud of myself if
the truth be told, being well dressed, with an air of city prosperity.
Will was in the bit of an office behind the store. The old place was as
mussy and dirty as ever, with fat files of dusty old letters and
accounts. The old desk where father used to make up his bills was
littered with last year's mail. It was Sunday, and the musty smell of
the closed store came in through the door. It all gave me the forlornest
feeling I had had in years.
"This will never pay, Will," I said to my brother, who was turning the
leaves of a worm-eaten day-book. "The time when the small business would
pay a man anything worth while is pretty nearly over for good."
"I suppose so," he replied despondently. "But somehow we must get a
living out of it."
"Let the judge have it, if he'll take it. I can find you something
better."
There was a place in Dround's that Will might work into; and before long
he could be of use to me in a scheme that was coming around the corner
of my mind into sight. As I talked, Will's eyes brightened. Before we
left the little office a new kind of look, the look of hope, had come
over his face. I thought he seemed already some years younger. It takes
the steps of a treadmill, downward faced, to crush the spirit in a man!
That was a happy morning. Surely, one of the joys of success is to give
it away to the right ones. I remember a good many times in my life that
I have had the pleasure of seeing that same look of hope, of a new
spirit, come into a man's face, when I gave him his chance where he was
least expecting it.
"But, Will, mind you, if you come to the city you'll no longer be your
own man," I cautioned him. "Dround'll own you, or I shall. No doing what
you want! To work with me is to work under me. Can you stand taking
orders from your junior?"
"I guess, Van," he answered without any pride, "you have shown yourself
to be the boss. I'll follow."
That night, when Will and May had left us at the junction where we were
to take the Chicago train, Sarah brushed my arm with her cheek in a
little intimate way she had and whispered:--
"May couldn't thank you. She feels it too much. You have made them so
happy--there's a future now for them all. And I think, maybe, I can make
you as good a wife as she could--perhaps better, some ways. May said so!
Though May is a very nice woman, and I shall always love her."
"I guess you are both right," I replied, too happy to say much more.
* * * * *
A few weeks later and we were married. The Drounds gave us a pretty
little wedding breakfast, to which came the few friends I had in the
world and a few of the many Sarah had. If Mrs. Dround was a careless
hostess sometimes, that was not the day. She was specially gracious to
Will and May, who were 'most strangers. It was all just as it should be,
and I felt proud of myself to be there and to have this handsome,
high-bred woman for my wife.
It was Sarah's idea that all the others should leave the house first,
and that then we should slip away quietly to the train by ourselves. So
at the last, while I was waiting for my bride to come downstairs, Mrs.
Dround and I happened to be alone. She looked pale and worn, as if the
people had tired her. She ordered the servants to take away the great
bunches of roses that filled every nook in the room.
"They are too sweet," she explained. "I like them--but in the next
room."
Her fastidiousness surprised me, and, as always, I began to wonder about
her. Suddenly she leaned forward and spoke swiftly, intently:--
"I hope you and Sarah will be happy together--really happy!"
It was an ordinary kind of thing to say, but beneath the plain words
there seemed to lie something personal.
"We shall be happy, of course!" I answered lightly. "There's nothing
against it in sight."
"Ah, my friend, you can't count that way! Happiness is hard to get in
this world, and you pass it by at odd corners and never know it." She
smiled a little sadly, and then added in a more ordinary tone: "Sarah
tells me that you are to be away only a few days. Does business tempt
you so much that you can't resist it even now?"
"Well, I expect to love Sarah just as much when I get back to work.
Business is a man's place, as the house is a woman's. Take either out of
their places for long, and something is likely to go wrong with them."
She laughed at my satisfied wisdom.
"Are you so needed over there in the office?"
"You must ask your husband that."
"He says that you are the cleverest man they have had for years. Does
that make you proud?"
"Thank you!"
"Will you let the big dog Strauss eat us?" she laughed on.
"I'll tell you a few years later, madam."
"Yes," she mused, "you are right. A man, a strong man--and that's the
only kind that is a man--must be at work. The sweetest love can't keep
him long."
Here Sarah's voice reached us:--
"You mustn't distract him to-day of all days, Jane!"
"He can't be distracted long, my child--by anybody!"
* * * * *
We had taken a pleasant house on one of the broad avenues to the south
beyond the smoke bank, with a bit of a garden and a few trees. When we
got back from New York we found supper waiting for us, roses on the
table, a bottle of wine ready to open, and on the sideboard a box of
cigars.
"The hand of Jane!" remarked my wife, as she rearranged the flowers and
put the roses on the mantelpiece.
"The hand of Jane?" I repeated dully. "You mean Mrs. Dround did it all?"
"Yes, of course; it reaches everywhere."
And Sarah did not look as much pleased as I expected.